Alan Dein’s East End Shops
P.Lipman, Kosher Poultry Dealers, Hessel St
“In my twenties, I’d been doing a number of oral history recordings, working for the Museum of the Jewish East End which was very active recording stories of the life of Jewish people who had settled here.”explained Alan Dein, broadcaster and oral historian, outlining the background to his unique collection of more than a hundred photographs of East End shopfronts.
“My photographs of the derelict shopfronts record the last moments of the Jewish community in the area. The bustling world of the inter-war years had been moved into the suburbs, and the community that stayed behind was less identifiable. In the nineteen eighties they were just hanging on, some premises had been empty for more than five years. They were like a mouthful of broken teeth, a boxer’s mouth that had been thumped, with holes where teeth once were.”
Feeding his twin passions for photography and collecting, Alan took these pictures in 1988 while walking around the streets of the East End at a time when dereliction prevailed. Although his family came from the Jewish East End and his Uncle Lou was a waiter at Blooms, Alan was born elsewhere and first came to study. “As a student at the City of London Polytechnic in Old Castle St, I spent a lot of time hanging out here – though the heart of the area for me at that time was the student common room and bar.” he told me.
“Afterwards, in 1988, I moved back to live in a co-operative housing scheme in Whitehorse Rd in Stepney and then I had more time to walk around in this landscape that evoked the fragmentary tales I knew of my grandparents’ lives in the East End. The story I heard from their generation of the ‘monkey parade’, when once people walked up and down the Mile End Road to admire the gleaming shopfronts and goods on display. My family thought I was mad to move back because when they left the East End they put it behind them, and it didn’t reflect their aspirations for me.
The eighties were a terrible time for removing everything, comparable to what the Victorians had done a century earlier. But I have always loved peeling paint, paint that has been weathered and worn seafront textures, and this was just at the last moment before these buildings were going to be redeveloped, so I photographed the shopfronts because this landscape was not going to last.”
In many of these pictures, there is an uneasy contradiction between the proud facades and the tale of disappointment which time and humanity has written upon them. This is the source of the emotionalism in these photographs, seeing faded optimism still manifest in the confident choice of colours and the sprightly signwriting, becoming a palimpsest overwritten by the elements, human neglect and graffiti. In spite of the flatness of these impermeable surfaces, in each case we know a story has been enclosed that is now shut off from us for ever. Beyond their obvious importance as an architectural and a social record, Alan’s library of shopfronts are also a map of his exploration of his own cultural history – their cumulative heartbreak exposing an unlocated grief that is easily overlooked in the wider social narrative of the movement of people from the East End to better housing in the suburbs.
Yet Alan sees hope in these tantalising pictures too, in particular the photo at the top, of Lipman’s Kosher Poultry Dealers, in which the unknown painter ran out of paint while erasing the name of the business, leaving the word “Lip” visible. “A little bit of lip!” as Alan Dein terms it brightly, emblematic of an undying resilience in the face of turbulent social change.
Goulston St
In Whitechapel
Commercial Rd
Redchurch St
Stepney Green
Cheshire St
Alie St
Hessel St
Hackney Rd
Quaker St
Mile End Rd
Toynbee St
Alie St
In E2
Brick Lane
Great Eastern St
Commercial St
Hessel St
Mile End Rd
Relocated to Edgeware
Bow Common Lane
Brick Lane
Ben Jonson Rd
Wilkes St
Bow Rd
Ridley Rd
New Goulston St.
Whitechapel High St
Alderney Rd, Stepney
Photographs copyright © Alan Dein
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What ravishing color in such sad photos.
This is so poignant.
Every single one of these shops has its own design, which was recognisable and worked in its time. Wonderful pictures that show the charm of a bygone era!
Love & Peace
ACHIM
Wonderful photos. Thank you.
Such a sad sight, but what a rich historical memento.
Such sad pictures. I grew up on the East End and my father was a Kosher butcher. He worked for Maxie Strongwater in Old Montague Street. He made the best Vienna’s and SaltBeef ever.
Great set of pictures. Thank you.
Hello,
Firstly thank you for sharing this blog post – such an interesting read and important record for the community.
“But I have always loved peeling paint, paint that has been weathered and worn seafront textures, and this was just at the last moment before these buildings were going to be redeveloped, so I photographed the shopfronts because this landscape was not going to last.”
Mr (Dr?) Dein has nailed it here! These photos date from when colour processing became available at reasonable cost and they make full use of the colour record. Excellent.
During the early eighties as part of my career development I was sent to work at my employers head office in Holborn Bars, close to the East End. Although I lodged in Shepherds Bush, I spent a lot of time wandering around the East End as a friend from work lived just off the Mile End Road. These pictures bring it all back. At the time the place seemed to be a scene of almost complete desolation. Far worse than anything to be seen in my home town of Birmingham. But with hindsight this was just one of the many transformational phases of this part of London. After a gap of almost fifty years I returned to the East End last August and found it to be much more alive and vibrant but with clear evidence of new transformations just around the corner. For the East End of London the old saying still runs true. As one door closes another opens
During the early eighties as part of my career development I was sent to work at my employers head office in Holborn Bars, close to the East End. Although I lodged in Shepherds Bush, I spent a lot of time wandering around the East End as a friend from work lived just off the Mile End Road. These pictures bring it all back. At the time the place seemed to be a scene of almost complete desolation. Far worse than anything to be seen in my home town of Birmingham. But with hindsight this was just one of the many transformational phases of this part of London. After a gap of almost forty years I returned to the East End last August and found it to be much more alive and vibrant but with clear evidence of new transformations just around the corner. For the East End of London the old saying still runs true. As one door closes another opens
I used to pass Lyon’s shop when I went to visit my friend who lived in Wheler House in Quaker St, but I never went inside because I got my sweets from Harry’s shop, on the corner of Brick Lane and Quaker Street. I think Lyon’s sold bread (?). It then shut and fell into disrepair. As a child from an immigrant background, I found the Jewish shop names really intriguing because they were foreign.